Depression Story
By
Chris Harrington

Depression is a tough subject to write about, especially when it’s your own experiences with what Winston Churchill used to refer to as “The Black Dog”.
Being neither an expert on the subject or a medical professional I can only use my own experiences as an example of what can be a crippling affliction.
I suppose I am lucky. With the help of a very understanding wife and modern medications I now have a somewhat tenuous grip on the problem that I have been dealing with (or not) for most of my adult life.

It wasn’t until I was well into my forties that I realized that I had a problem and started to try to deal with it, and now, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight I can now explain a lot of totally irrational behavior in my past.
Depression has affected me in many ways. I have a somewhat patchy record in relationships. I have been married four times with several long term live-in relationships in-between. Can I blame my failed relationships on depression?
Well, not entirely, but I now realize what a pain in the arse I was to live with.
Massive mood swings and long periods of “I ain’t even going to get out of bed” depressions don’t exactly help. I am still friends with all of my ex’s.
They all say the same thing. When I was down I was absolutely impossible to deal with. I would just withdraw into my own little world and completely ignore reality, sometimes for months at a time. Thankfully we can now laugh about it.

For most of my life things were always either really, really good or really, really bad. One or the other.
When I was in a manic phase I would be liable to attempt just about anything. I would start a business or learn a new skill or move to another country as I rode the crest of the wave. Everything was good and I would plunge into whatever I had decided to tackle head-first.
The flip-side of the coin was the down-times. Fuck. I would be in a place that was so dark that nothing could reach me. I would stop sleeping and eating and would spend weeks in a cloud of misery. It didn’t matter what anyone said to me. I just knew that no-one understood how I felt and nothing could help.
(Desperate probably remembers me waking him up at 4am one morning after a bad downer, I decided to end it all by gassing myself in a car- I ran Ferrets air-duct hose from the exhaust into the window and stuffed rags around it to make a good seal and then sat back and waited. I woke up a couple of hour’s later freezing cold with a blinding headache. The car had run out of petrol….Typical! I walked about five miles to Harley farm and woke Chris up. To his credit he didn’t miss a beat. Invited me in and sat and listened to me for a while before deciding that only one thing would
help- Vodka! Thanks Chris)

I found my own ways to deal with it although I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone else. One way was to simply run away from whatever I thought was making me feel so bad.
In a matter of minutes I would make up my mind that it was time to go and I would pack my shit up and disappear. Sometimes it would be to another street in the same town and sometimes it would be to another hemisphere… I have lived in a lot of different places over the years. Germany: 5 years.
France: 6 months, Spain: 6 months, Italy: 3 months, Norway: 6 months,
Malaysia: 6 months (Thanks desperate!) Greece: 1 year. And I have now lived in Dallas Texas for the last thirteen years (a personal best) In between these forays to foreign parts I would move around the UK according to my moods. Not only was this not a good thing for my relationships it also didn’t make for a decent career either… Another way to deal with it was to “self medicate”. I would spend long periods of time strung out on whatever drug I could easiest get a hold of.
Drink was never much of a problem for me-I have never been much of a drinker. But just about any other substance that could provide me with some relief was subject to severe abuse.
I would spend months consuming speed at a ludicrous pace, Cocaine was a personal favorite for years as was LSD. At one stage I did so much acid that a full year has pretty much been wiped from my memory.
During my famous ‘90 acid binge I actually got married and divorced without having any recollection of my wife (Number 3) I know her name because its on the divorce papers but I have no idea what she looks like. Now that’s what I call stoned!
People tell me I was a lot of laughs back then; I just wish I could remember some of it.

In 1993 I got the chance to come and work in America. I wasted no time in jumping on a plane and found myself in Dallas working for D&D exhausts as a development engineer.
Within a few months I started seeing the woman who is now my wife of twelve years.
Karen turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. She made me realize that I had a problem with depression and under threat of sending back to England to be miserable she convinced me to see a shrink.
I was totally dismissive of seeing a physiatrist. It just seemed so bloody American, but I agreed to give it a try.
When I sat down in front of the shrink I was obviously not convinced that I needed to be there but I started answering his questions anyway. After a few minutes he stopped me and then he started to tell me just about every thing I had ever done, what I felt and how I reacted. I was stunned. How could he possibly know this stuff? After all nobody knows what I have been through.
The simple fact was that he had seen the same symptoms a thousand times. He explained that I was suffering from manic-depression and it was treatable. I was still not 100% convinced but he gave me a couple of medications and made a follow-up appointment for a second visit.
When I went back a couple of weeks later I was still not doing great and the tablets he put me on didn’t seem to agree with me so he changed them to a different one. It actually took four attempts before he found the right medication for me (apparently everyone is different) I can’t say that I noticed an immediate difference, but over a period of a few months I started to notice that the lows were not as deep and the highs were not as manic. Over time I found that I have settled into a kind of happy medium.

I still have bad days but they are generally triggered by something that happens rather than appearing for absolutely no reason. In 2000 my 18 year-old Son was murdered in Dunstable on Christmas Eve and I hit a pretty bad downward spiral after that. (I hate Christmas now) and every now and then I’ll get the urge to fuck off on my own for a bit and to Karen’s credit she is happy to let me do it.
Sometimes it’s just for a couple of days and outhers it might be two weeks, but it helps for me to get away and just get my head straight. (Generally I’ll go fishing or go and camp out in the desert in West Texas…aahhhh
solitude)

That’s about it; I have tried to be as straight-up as possible about my experiences with depression. I know that everyone is different and that I will probably never be completely “cured” but the medications have helped me and I have been on them for over ten years now.
If you asked me for advice I would say the most important thing to do is talk to someone (anyone!) about it. Once you pry open the door a little it gets easier to get to the stage of talking to a professional about it and hopefully getting some relief.

On a personal note I would like to say that every now and then you meet someone who ends up having a profound affect on your life. Chris Ireland, whether he knows it or not has been one of those people for me. I made a pretty good living for a few years as a freelance writer and photographer for several car magazines in the US. (Apparently they liked my “English”
sense of humour- I thought I was just taking the piss) Chris was the reason I got started after reading some of his BSH articles.
I am not a “Biker” although I have raced and worked on bikes my whole life and Chris always treated me the same as his patch club mates. He was there for me when I needed a helping hand and never expected anything in return. A rare gem is Gummidge. A good bloke and a good mate.

Chris Harrington
Dragshotz Racing
214-752-0720
www.dragshotz.com